I actually didn't do the glow effect on Johan. It came from a professionally done poster I found on the web. As for the Wieter's lighting effect, it was my intention to get the crystal glow effect on the ball. I actually like the way it looks. I'm still getting the hang of using lighting, gradient, and lens flare effects. Any advice on how to make the players "pop" is appreciated.

I actually didn't do the glow effect on Johan. It came from a professionally done poster I found on the web. As for the Wieter's lighting effect, it was my intention to get the crystal glow effect on the ball. I actually like the way it looks. I'm still getting the hang of using lighting, gradient, and lens flare effects. Any advice on how to make the players "pop" is appreciated.

try layering the player, mess around with a bunch of different layers using overlay/soft light/etc and different opacities. i like putting a small gaussian blur of the player underneath all the other layers to separate it a bit more from the background. just fool around with that kind of stuff and different lighting effects to get a feel of it.